Academic staff office features botany art of Kandis Elliot

In some ways, Kandis Elliot’s artwork can be like the carnivorous plants she introduces on one of her posters.

Her bright, intricate pictures draw you in and trap your gaze until you’ve absorbed every small detail. And, like the plants, which live off the insects they ensnare and ingest, readers are sated by bits of knowledge gleaned from every corner of the poster.

This spring, Elliot’s work – including her poster on carnivorous plants – is featured in the Office of the Secretary of the Academic Staff. Elliot recently retired as senior artist in the UW–Madison Department of Botany.

Elliot’s work blends science and art and, at the same time, shows how art can be incorporated into university life, says Donna Silver, secretary of the academic staff.

Also featured in the exhibit are Elliot’s posters of UW–Madison’s titan arum (known as the “corpse flower”) and her “Introduction to Fungi” poster, which she produced with Botany Greenhouse Director Mo Fayyaz, and which won first place for informational graphics in the journal Science’s 2010 International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge.

Elliot crafts her work by digitally typesetting and painting with Adobe CS software. Photos and original drawings are blended together to create the full images.

Artwork by academic staff has been featured in the secretary’s office since a 2009 remodeling left four blank white walls – the makings of a new, tucked-away campus art gallery.

Elliot’s show runs through June. The office, in Room 270 Bascom Hall, is open to the public from 9 a.m.–noon and 1–4:30 p.m.

All of the posters are available for purchase; visit here for details.

 

Academic staff who would like their work considered for exhibition in the Office of the Secretary of the Academic Staff should contact the office at acstaff@bascom.wisc.edu.